Thursday, August 21, 2008

Spring Mountain Country Club

Okay, so this picture has been up for a few weeks and I thought that I would give some what of a description. :) I did a photo shoot a couple of weeks ago for a new "country club" just outside of Vegas in a small town called Pahrump/ It is owned by some .com millionaire out of LA who likes to race cars. This is pretty much the coolest thing ever!! You pay an annual membership fee along with some monthly dues and you get a full blown track to race on 16 days a month (car not included).

They also offer driving schools for Lotus, Corvette, and Suzuki motorcycles. Needless to say, I was in heaven!!! The shot turned out really well and it was a ton of fun driving the cars around.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Steve is currently on the Seabourn 'Spirit' with the same captain as the article mentioned below. He found out that the captain is an amateur photographer. He worked a deal with him. Steve will give him a few pointers about his camera, in exchange for an exclusive story session of the attack! Needless to say, he's pretty excited!

A luxury cruise line will re-evaluate whether to offer future cruises off the coast of Somalia after pirates attempted to attack one of its ships early Saturday.

The pirates were in two small boats and were carrying machine guns and a rocket-propelled grenade when they attempted the attack on Seabourn Cruise Lines' "Spirit" about 5:35 a.m. local time Saturday, Deborah Natansohn, president of the cruise line, told CNNRadio.

The ship was carrying 150 passengers and a crew of about 160.

The ship, she said, immediately instituted its emergency response system. "The occupants of those boats did not succeed in boarding the ship and eventually turned away ... our captain and crew did a terrific job taking responsive action."

Passenger Mike Rogers of Vancouver, Canada, said the pirates were shooting and sending rockets at the boat.

"The captain tried to run one of the boats over, but they were small boats, about 25 feet long," he told CNNRadio affiliate CKNW in Vancouver.

"Each one had four or five people on it, and (the captain) said he was going to do anything to keep them from getting on board."

The captain, however, did not hit the alarm button to alert passengers of the emergency, Rogers said. "He announced it over the speakers because he was scared people would run up on deck, and he didn't want people on deck because they would have been shot."

The cruise ship eventually outran the pirates' boats, Natansohn said. One person suffered minor injuries, she said without elaborating.

"There's some minor damage done to the ship," Rogers said. "There's no water right now, for instance, in some places, and I believe one of the grenades actually went off in one of the cabins, but everyone on board is fine."

The ship is now en route to the Seychelles Islands, Natansohn said.

On Thursday, the United Nations' World Food Program warned that hijackings off the coast of Somalia were restricting the delivery of needed food assistance to the country.

"The southern Somali coastline is one of the most dangerous in the world," the WFP said on its Web site. "In recent months, WFP's operations in Somalia have been sabotaged by the hijackings of two vessels carrying relief food. Ship owners are now demanding armed escorts to travel in these waters."

Natansohn said efforts were under way Saturday to locate the pirates. "We have notified U.S., Canadian and Australian authorities because most of our passengers come from those three countries, as well as local authorities in Africa."

"Seabourn 'Spirit' has offered itineraries in that part of the world before, but we'll obviously be looking at the incident to determine what to do in the future," she said.

Rogers said, "We're always looking for adventure, but this is probably a little more than we would normally look for."

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Yesterday was our official signing, and since Steve was obviously not there to sign, I signed on his behalf. Apparently, I didn't think that process through!

I've been told that signing for a home is like signing your life away. For me, it was like autographing every single page of a 500 page book...TIMES NINE HUNDRED!

I was grateful that Anne (my Mother-in-law) came with me. She made the whole experience go by quickly. However, it was no help that the air conditioner at the Title office was broken. So, here’s me (the human furnace) and Anne (the hot-flashin’-queen!) trying to direct me through the heap of signature lines.

I signed my name, and then everywhere that Steve was to sign, I had to write (IN CURSIVE I MIGHT ADD!!) "Steven J Bell by Emily S Bell his attorney-in-fact".I'll admit, I NEVER write in cursive. I hated it in school, and to this day, still refuse to use it for anything other than signing my own name! I would venture to say that I’ve forgotten how most of the alphabet should look in cursive. By the end of the signing, I was printing the letters and ‘hooking’ them together with lines to make it look like cursive. It literally looked like a child scribbled out Steve’s name! I was concentrating so hard on making my 5th grade penmanship legible that my hand cramped up and had to temporarily be given the nickname “Quasi”.

Now that this is out of the way, we are only waiting on a few small details. If all goes well, I could have keys in hand by next week! We're unofficially official home owners! :0)